Hiro

Correct, it is something like 9 months out of rego, so legally should be towed or trailered - it physically runs fine (with a new batery). Depending on how far you're going you might be able to get away with an unregistered vehicle permit, but I think they're only for the purposes of getting to a mechanic to get a blue/pink slip.

No worse than the run out to Wisemans Ferry...

Toymods annual Megacruise is to Palm Beach on the 27th as well. We don't go all the way down to Palm Beach anymore, a couple of years ago we over-flowed the carpark big time and decided to backtrack to the footy fields and tennis courts at Hitchcock Pk in Whale Beach, plenty of room for cars there and a BBQ. And McCarrs Creek Road is plenty of fun if you're in a pack and can space the cars out enough, that way you don't have to worry too much about traffic. Any twisties are good twisties, and if I'm not satisfied then I just take the Old Pac home :P

I mean how many litres are you actually putting in? You'll never be able to add 50L in one go, even with driving around with the fuel light on and the car cutting out around corners you'll still only get 47L or so in. Best way to measure fuel consumption is the following: 1) Fill the tank completely, to the first or second click (doesn't really matter, but just for consistency) 2) Reset your tripmeter 3) Drive around for several hundred km, at least until your gauge gets to below 1/4 full (the further you go, the more accurate it will be) 4) Fill up at the same petrol station you filled up at in 1), to the same click 5) Divide the amount of fuel you put in by the reading on the tripmeter, then multiply by 100 - this will give you L/100km which is more useful than km/tank when comparing to other people (because it doesn't rely on you filling the tank exactly the same every time) They appear on eBay every so often, or you can go to your nearest Supercheap/Repco etc and order it in if they don't have it on their shelves. Got electronic copies of the wiring diagrams though (scanned photos) What you are experiencing is the torque converter locking up. It is completely normal for automatics. If you're struggling to overtake on the freeway, either manually drop the transmission out of overdrive or floor the accelerator to initiate kickdown, this should drop it back to at least third and allow decent overtaking (by decent, remember it is only an 85kw engine hooked up to an automatic, so performance isn't exactly stellar).

Why change a 2-year-old battery just because you accidentally ran it flat? Give it a good long charge and be on your merry way, only replace it if it's getting on to 4-5 years old or doesn't seem to hold a charge.

Mmmmm, boosting the Soarer through tunnels :D Pity I'd be unlikely to wrangle the keys again, although the 102 is more than loud enough in tunnels

Definitely not good consumption there, although what are you classing as a "full" tank? If you're filling up when the warning light first comes on then you're only putting 35-40L in, which coupled with an auto and stop-start city traffic isn't _unreasonable_. If you're leaving it to the last drop and squeezing 45+L into the tank and only getting 350km down the highway before filling up, then there definitely is a problem. Try the usual suspects first (check ECU for error codes, new air filter/spark plugs/fuel filter, check thermostat is allowing the car to warm up fully etc), O2 sensor would be another one to look in to as it could be malfunctioning causing the car to run rich on closed loop (it's ignored on open-loop/full-throttle anyway. If you need any help with the above steps give me a yell, I've got the full Gregorys workshop manual for the AE101/102s and know my way around the car pretty well from doing my own work/servicing on my 102.

Back up to the top...

Installed the new bonnet-headlight seal that I got after 6 weeks of waiting for it to come from Japan (only to be told that the other one I ordered was NLA)....time to start scouting wreckers for good-condition bonnets to nick the second seal from.

Engine, driveline and possibly suspension components will be shared with the Starlet, some chassis bits too (like you should be able to swap seats), pretty much everything else will be unique though.

If it's a twisty, I usually use my forearm....

Tried getting a quote from a panel-beaters? You might be able to pop the welds holding the top skin on and get a new panel (since it's relatively flat), but quite often the rust has spread throughout it and you need a new one. Keep an eye out at wreckers too, especially one that strips the cars and keeps the panels indoors (as they'll be in better condition, the ones in the yard will be nothing but rust and air).

Even more amazing as to what 12-odd years of maths has obviously failed to do :P

Yes it is extremely common (almost a standard feature actually) that the ST162 sunroofs rust like it is going out of fashion. Unfortunately, unless you can score a perfect NOS panel or a minter that has been garaged for its whole life, your only real option is trying to find a fibreglass/glass reproduction (they come up from time to time on eBay, but usually overseas). Wouldn't be surprising too if the fault with the slide function is simply the rust expanding the panel so much that it jams in the slides, ours has the exact same issue.

Because the GT is the base model - AE86 Levins/Truenos were GT, GTV, GT Apex in order of base-model to top-spec (although the AE92/101/111s went GT, GT-Apex, GTZ)

Anyone else notice the big fat crack in the windscreen appear at 1:13?

Drive up to Cessnock and do the shank challenge at SSS... Trip home probably wouldn't be as enjoyable though :P

NSW: Unleaded: Lansvale: 7 Eleven, Caltex/Woolworths, Shell Burwood: 7 Eleven South Strathfield: 7 Eleven. If someone wants to add to that list, that would be great, thanks. My mistake, 91 is still available, but for a limited time only (and a lot of places have already jumped the gun and gotten rid of it). Under the NSW Biofuel (Ethanol Content) Ammendment Act a minimum % amount of petrol sold from July 1 onwards had to be E10, and all 91 will be replaced by E10 by July 2012. Initially it was to be July 2011, but I think a 12 month grace period was added (the legislature took effect in July 2011 but allows for later start dates).

In NSW there its no such thing as regular unleaded any more, it is either E10 or premium (all 91 is now E10). Personally I never use anything less than 95 in any of my cars regardless of the trip length.

Oh don't get me wrong, there is a place for backyard inventions and inventors (and it is such a shame that the ABC canned New Inventors), but those are mere flashes in the pan compared to something as groundbreaking and future-shaping as a viable world-wide alternative fuel source.

Is it a LiteAce or a Townace? Didn't think the Liteaces were sold past about 1992 or so...as for the KR42 Townace, the 7K-C (the carby version) only came out in 1997, which would be the "one-year" thing the mechanic was talking about, however the EFI versions were sold for 5 more years after that, so depending on what is broken and what you can re-use you might be able to get a short-block from an EFI one and use that. Might be worth checking around commercial vehicle wreckers, fairly sure the 7K came out in forklifts as well so that might help too.

No, I'm from the school of thought of "if the overwhelming evidence from past and present is towards one theory, then there is a decent chance that it is correct". I may be a skeptic/cynic at heart, but I also subscribe to Occam's Razor. Remember too that a lot of scientific theory is based around summations and generalisations, and isn't assumed to be 100% set-in-stone - the speed of light limit is a classic example of this, for 99.99% of cases it can be assumed to be the limit, but there was always the chance that there would be an exception. Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity itself is a generalisation of General Relativity and is well known to not be 100% correct, but in the circumstances that it is used it is accurate enough (it ignores gravity for instance, because in a small-enough relativistic state gravity is uniform and thus irrelevant), and has been experimentally both proved and disproved (but that doesn't make it wrong). Besides, comparing a couple of guys on YouTube to someone like Tesla (whom yes I believe was a bit of a crackpot, but he _was_ a brilliant thinker) is a fairly long bow to draw. There is a big difference between a video posted online with very little merit or method (guy reaches into engine bay, apparently disconnects something but we can't really tell because we can't see it, then states that he just disconnected a fuel line which is "proof" that the engine is running on water) and a genuine scientific proof. Real discoveries, real advancements are made in labs, by educated but outside-the-box thinkers, and are published in respected scientific journals and media releases, not by Joe Bloggs in his backyard (and especially not from something that was probably made from plans on the internet) and posted on YouTube. As I said before, the concept of water as a fuel source is nothing new (ie hydrogen obtained from water), nor is it revolutionary. Fuel cells alone have been running around for at least 40 years (the Apollo spacecraft generated electricity in hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells, which also created cooling and potable water for the craft and the crew). Water itself however has been widely debunked as a valid self-contained fuel (and I am at pains here to differentiate between valid and possible - sure you can run an electrolysis cell in your boot and split water into hydrogen and oxygen, but to propose it as an alternative fuel source is laughable at best) due to the inefficiencies and entropy inherent in splitting and recombining the molecules (this is true for any chemical reaction - the energy required to break a molecule is greater than the energy relased by reforming it), regardless of it being used in a fuel cell or in an internal combustion engine. As I said before, the future for water as a fuel source lies in the hydrogen being split from water using electrolysis (or other methods) at refining plants using mass-produced environmentally friendly energy (solar, wind, hydro, bacterial etc), then sold and stored on a car as a compressed gas/liquid to be combined with atmospheric oxygen either in a fuel cell or internal combustion, giving only water vapour and energy as a product. This has already begun with vehicles such as the Honda Clarity, and is only a matter of time before it becomes widespread - no way that "Big Oil" can "squash" THAT well-proven and well-known technology.

Great day out was had by all and sundy (ie me), big thanks go to Pete for the spread, Rob for providing the footy and for the weather gods sparing us too much of the wet slippery stuff, just with they could have got my memo about the humidity. Still, the clouds did help prevent me turning into a lobster like I normally do on summer cruises... Sorry about the slightly disorganised drive up to Castle Hill though, I deliberately avoided Marsden Rd since I went through there on the way to the meet and the cops had set up shop at the Memorial Park at the top of the hill and were pulling people in left right and centre - even if all of our cars were 100% legal (and I know they're not), the odds are that at least one of us would have been pulled in, which would mean we'd either have to leave them to take one for the team or all pull over as a bunch and wait for the cops to finish - in that light, James Ruse Dr and Pennant Hills Rd were the safer, albeit slightly more confusing choices. Unfortunately, this meant that we lost a few a long the way, but we all got there in the end which is the important thing. Was good to finally get some alone time in the Snoarer out on the open roads, normally I am restricted by "baggage" in the passenger seat or boring suburban roads - a car like that needs to be let off the leash every so often. Decided on a little detour on the way home instead of taking the ferry and the north road...bad idea. Next time remind me not to go down Galston Gorge in a car with a 2-way LSD and a wheelbase 2 suburbs long...one 5 km/h hairpin is bad enough, six of them is just taking the p1ss. I'll be there as usual